Keepsake

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  But Olivia couldn't hear him, not above her own heartrending wails.

  Chapter 23

  It wasn't definite that Rand killed Alison. There was no proof.

  After a morning of emotional devastation, that single uncertainty was all that Olivia had left to cling to. So many other horrors were certain now. It was certain that Rand was the father of Alison's baby. That Olivia's relationship with her family was changed forever. That she and Quinn were through.

  She spent hours of heart-wrenching tears and unbearable agony holed up in her townhouse before being thrown into a sudden, violent panic.

  The ring ... the letter. They're evidence that could be used to indict Rand.

  It was the most obvious danger in the world, and it had taken her most of the day to see it.

  She scooped up the letter and the ring from her bed and began rushing around her townhouse looking for a hiding place. A closet? A vase? A bag of A & P coffee? Her jewelry box! Yes, somewhere obvious like that; the police would never look there. Of course they would! Somewhere else. The box of Kleenex on her nightstand? No one would ever look there. No, too risky! What if she threw the box in the recycle bin by mistake when the Kleenex were gone?

  What if she did? That would be the best thing—to get rid of the evidence. She didn't even know if the letter was real. She was assuming it had come from Myra, along with the ring. Maybe Myra had forged it!

  She studied the letter through swollen eyes. It was Rand's handwriting, all right, as distinctive as a thumbprint. She ran to the cupboard and grabbed a box of matches, then lit one and held a corner of the letter in the flame. It caught.

  What was she doing? She couldn't do that! It was destroying evidence, against the law! She smacked the letter on the countertop and, even more panicky now, put out the smoldering flame with the sleeve of her robe. The last I love you was scorched, but not Rand's signature. So deep was Olivia's despair that she didn't know whether she should feel happy or tragic about it.

  She burst into tears again, amazing herself. She wanted to be done with all that. She wanted to be completely adult about the whole affair. Her basic problem in life was that she had never been touched by tragedy, that was her basic problem in life. Alison, yes, her death was a tragedy; but other than that, Olivia's life had gone smoothly. Very smoothly. Too smoothly. That was the basic problem. One little setback like this, and—

  Who was she kidding? An old gas oven that poofs and singes your eyebrows, that was a setback. One that blows up your house with you in it, that was a tragedy.

  And I don't know how ... I don't know how ... I'm ever going to crawl out from under the rubble, she told herself, bowing her head in tears.

  The doorbell rang, sending shock waves anew through her. She yanked the silverware drawer open and threw the scorched letter and the ring into it, then ran to see who it was. She peeped through the keyhole. Shit. Eileen.

  Olivia stood without breathing, waiting for her sister-in-law to leave.

  Not Eileen.

  "Livvy? Livvy, are you in there? Olivia!" Eileen began knocking, then banging, on the door. She peeked through the sidelight while Olivia flattened herself from view.

  The phone had been ringing on and off all morning and Olivia had ignored it. Big mistake. And she had left her car parked outside for all the world to see, for God's sake. What a stellar fugitive she'd make.

  Desperate to ward off a call to the paramedics by Eileen on her cell phone, Olivia took a deep breath, wiped her eyes, and opened the door. Smiling wanly, she tried to look ill.

  She was a grand success. Eileen took one look at her and crumbled into motherly sympathy. "Oh, Livvy—you've come down with something," she cried, rushing inside to embrace Olivia.

  "No, no... you'd better not," said Olivia, keeping her distance. "You're bound to catch it."

  "Don't be silly; I never get sick. You poor thing ... all alone here ... you didn't hear the phone? The girls at Miracourt have been calling all morning, they told me."

  "I just didn't feel like answering the phone," Olivia mumbled, which was true enough.

  "I stopped by the shop, and when they told me they couldn't reach you, I made excuses for you—but I was worried, Liv. With all these things that have been going on .... Well, forget about that now. Have you taken your temperature?" she asked, putting her hand to Olivia's brow. "You feel all right. Have you been crying?" she asked, scrutinizing Olivia up close.

  Olivia drifted out of the sunlight and into the shadows of the living room. "No. Why would I be crying? I ... was petting the neighbor's cat. My eyes got itchy. You know how allergic I am."

  "Then why let the cat in your house, for pity's sake? Especially when you're not feeling well."

  "I was looking for sympathy, I guess," said Olivia, managing a wry smile.

  "But what about Quinn? He doesn't have to be anywhere."

  "Oh, but he does. Mrs. Dewsbury gets out of the hospital this morning," Olivia explained, grateful to have something true to say. She had to get Eileen out of there!

  But Eileen, in maternal overdrive now, was heading for the kitchen. "You just go right upstairs to bed and I'll make you some lemon tea."

  In the kitchen she glanced around and said, "You must have been right in the middle of making breakfast when you got hit with this thing."

  "Sort of, yes."

  "Poor baby. I'll straighten up," she said, heading for the eggs and juice and opened loaf of bread.

  "No! No, that's all right," said Olivia. "I just need to lie down, that's all."

  "Yes, do that, Livvy," said Eileen, clearly concerned now. "You look a little green."

  "I think I'm going to throw up," Olivia blurted out, and this time she was telling the truth.

  "Go, go," said Eileen.

  Olivia turned and made a sprint for the guest bath, while behind her she heard Eileen call out, "My God, what happened to your sleeve? It has a big hole burned in it."

  Olivia threw up in what was probably record time, rinsed out quickly, and raced back to the kitchen. "It passed," she said grimly.

  Eileen had put away the eggs and bread and juice and was sponging off the ashes of Rand's letter from the granite counter.

  Olivia became faint with fear simply from the sight of it.

  "How on earth did you manage to set your robe on fire?" her sister-in-law said, scooping the ashes into her free hand. "You're in no state to be playing with matches."

  "So true," whispered Olivia.

  "I'm going to heat myself a cup of this coffee. You have a whole pot of it untouched," said Eileen, opening the microwave door.

  She discovered the half-nuked sausages and took them out, holding them toward Olivia for her inspection. "I think we'd better toss these, don't you?"

  The meaty smell of the gray, greasy links sent a new surge of nausea through Olivia. "Haftathrup," she gasped.

  Off she went, back she came, more terrified than before that Eileen had found Rand's letter. But Eileen was opening lower cupboards, not the drawers, looking for the garbage can in which to dump the sausages.

  "Don't... don't, Eileen. Please. Go home," said Olivia, taking her by the hand and coaxing her toward the door. Weaker by the minute, Olivia felt as if she was dragging a bolt of corduroy behind her.

  Eileen protested, but faced with the opened door, she had no choice but to go through it. "Well ... all right. But please—answer your phone. When will Quinn be back?"

  "Oh ... not today."

  "Oh, right—Mrs. Dewsbury. In that case, I'll stop by tonight. Flu is nothing to fool with, Livvy. You could become dehydrated and end up in a hospital. You never pay enough attention to your health. You don't exercise, you don't eat right ... you think you're so invincible."

  "Please, Eileen—not now."

  "Okay, okay, no more lectures," she said, kissing Olivia quickly on her cheek. "I love you and I worry about you, that's all. See you tonight. Now go back to bed, and drink plenty of fluids."

  Smiling dutifully,
Olivia closed the door after her sister-in-law and sank exhausted to the floor. More tears, an endless supply of them; where were they coming from?

  Eileen, her oldest friend ... oh, God, and the children ... Kristin and Zack would never recover from this. Look at Quinn, the scars he bore—and his father was innocent. And Olivia's mother and father—what would they say, what would they do, if they knew about their son? Her mind veered away from the thought; it was too appalling.

  Gradually, inevitably, the tears stopped. And in place of the crushing sorrow that Olivia felt, something new came creeping in, as stealthy as a cat on the hunt: suspicion.

  Did her parents already know? Bits and pieces of odd recollections flashed briefly across Olivia's mind like the Pleiades across a winter sky: her mother, a little too hysterical at the thought of testing the DNA of Alison's unborn baby ... her father, taking Quinn aside on New Year's Eve ... her brother, warning her that she didn't have all the facts ... her father again, hiding behind those curtains.

  Myra knew. Quinn knew. Was it such a stretch, after all, to assume that her parents knew? And if they knew that Rand was the baby's father, did they know even more about him besides? The thought was far more appalling than any that had preceded it.

  Why couldn't it have been some stranger who did it? Or the coach ... Francis Leary—even, horrific as the situation would have been, her Uncle Rupert. Anyone but her brother.

  Her need to keep her immediate family intact was primal, desperate—and a revelation. Up until this day she had not known how much they mattered to her. Now she did—and it was too late.

  She sat on the floor for a dreary eternity, unable for once to get up and go. The tears kept rolling down. Poor Eileen ... Poor Kristin ... poor Zack ... poor everyone.

  God help them all.

  ****

  Quinn had ordered a new monitor for Mrs. Dewsbury to be delivered via air freight; it arrived half an hour after he brought the widow home from the hospital. She was furious at him for his extravagance, ecstatic at the speedy replacement. She did love her CCTV.

  That evening, when they were sipping tea in the parlor after one of Quinn's pot roast dinners—like most bachelors, he was on intimate terms with aluminum foil and onion soup mix—Mrs. Dewsbury kicked back in her La-Z-Boy and said out of the blue, "I was thinking, maybe we should invite Olivia here for dinner one night."

  The chocolate chip cookie that Quinn was eating turned into mulch. He swallowed hard, then said quietly, "Sure. Maybe when you get back from your stay with Gerald."

  "I do like that girl," the widow said with obvious fondness. "I had no idea that she could be so warm and charming, so really delightful."

  She nibbled at her fancy bakery cookie and said, "I remember her as being very different in high school. You remember her then: She was always so very—hmm, how can I put this nicely?—determined."

  "She still is," Quinn said with a grim smile. He was thinking of Olivia as she hung out the second-floor window that morning, willing and able to pull out his hair.

  "Yes, but I see a softer side to her now. She's grown as a person. You know what I think? I think she's very much in love with you. You've done her a world of good. I'm assuming, by the way, that you feel the same about her," Mrs. Dewsbury added with a gently probing smile.

  For a hundred-pound octogenarian, she was flattening Quinn as well as any steamroller could do. He found it impossible to peel himself off the floor and skip around like a man in love. He mustered all the strength that he had left to say, "There will never be anyone else."

  Two cookies later, Quinn excused himself and went to bed. It was seven-thirty. Mrs. Dewsbury laughed at him. Even hundred-pound octogenarians stayed up later than that.

  ****

  Four days later, a package arrived at the big white house on Elm.

  Quinn had been working feverishly to complete his long list of projects before climbing into his truck and driving off into the sunset. He was intensely aware that he had done massive damage to one woman's life. Somehow he hoped to make up for it by doing extensive repairs to another woman's life. It didn't make much sense, but in his present state of meltdown, it was all that his brain could manage.

  "Wash your hands and sit down," the widow said, flipping two grilled cheese sandwiches. "The soup is getting cold. I don't see why you have to obsess over that work list, Quinn. Surely the flashing can wait until you get back from California; the weather will only get nicer."

  True enough, but he wouldn't be around to enjoy it.

  "Now that I know where the leak is coming from, it would drive me nuts to leave it the way it is," he said, more or less telling the truth. "I can't believe a smart lady like you let some con artists rip you off with those replacement windows," he added. "They're garbage."

  "Well, at least I had enough sense to contract only for one side. Once I saw how flimsy they were—anyway, you needn't be so snippy about it," she said, obviously hurt by his tone. "What's the matter with you, anyway? You've been this way for days."

  "Sorry." He didn't even try to come up with an excuse. Nothing short of terminal disease would explain a mood as foul as his had been—another good reason for having thrown himself into his chores.

  "What was in the package?"

  "I don't know; I haven't opened it yet."

  "How can you not open a package?"

  When it has Olivia's handwriting on it, he thought, but aloud he said, "Haven't had a chance, I guess."

  "I'll get it for you," said Mrs. Dewsbury, a catalogue shopper from back in the days of the Wells Fargo wagon. "You eat."

  He dumped half a box of oyster crackers into his Campbell's tomato soup, just to convince her that his appetite was normal and his mood jim-dandy. And meanwhile he wanted to tear at his clothes and howl at the moon with rage and frustration.

  Four days without holding Olivia, hearing her voice, inhaling the scent of her hair. So this was what it would be like. Four days. Four lifetimes.

  Olivia, he thought, shutting his eyes from the vision of her. Oh, God, please. Olivia.

  He was having a hard time breathing, much less eating, but he plowed away at his soup and crackers, wondering how he could have considered it a treat when he was a boy, and why he had ever made the mistake of admitting that to his hostess.

  He was rescuing the grilled cheese sandwiches from their overlong stay on the griddle when Mrs. Dewsbury shuffled into the kitchen. She was managing to get around without her walker nowadays; it was one of the few bright spots in the black void that Quinn was currently calling a life.

  "I'll do that, I'll do that," she said, waving the package at him. "Here. Open it. I'm so curious. There's no return address, did you notice?"

  "Yeah." He took out his Swiss Army knife and sliced through the wide clear tape that sealed every edge shut—Olivia was nothing if not thorough.

  He found it hard to believe that she was returning the ring and the letter to him, but if she was, he had an explanation ready for the curious old lady who was hovering near: the ring was his, the letter, an old note from his dad. Mrs. D. couldn't possibly read Rand's handwriting, much less recognize it.

  That was the general theory, anyway.

  He opened the flaps of the shallow box and stared at the contents. Olivia was not re-burdening him with the care and protection of the critical—and possibly criminal—evidence. She was merely returning, in order of importance, his pajama tops, Mennen deodorant, Bic razor, and Oral-B toothbrush.

  "Well, that's odd," said Mrs. Dewsbury. "What are those all about?"

  Quinn went blank. He was clean out of lies, excuses, and stories to tell.

  "Um," he said.

  "Olivia sent these, didn't she?" asked the savvy widow. Without waiting for an answer, she said, "You two have had a fight. Well, that explains your mood, and why you've been hanging around the house and fixing everything in sight."

  In silence, Quinn went back to the grilled cheese sandwiches, cutting each of them diagonally and all
ocating three halves for him, one for the widow.

  "For heaven's sake, Quinn—how long are you going to let this go on? Whatever you do, don't turn it into a competition between you. Just say you're sorry and get on with your lives. It's so much simpler in the long run."

  "It runs a little deeper than that," he said quietly.

  "How deep?"

  "Too deep."

  "You mean you two have broken it off?"

  "It looks that way."

  "That's ridiculous! Pardon the cliché, but you two are meant for each other."

  "Thanks," he said tersely, taking his seat again. "That makes me feel better."

  "Don't play the sullen teenager with me, young man," she said, tapping the table with the tip of her forefinger. "I want you to march right down to that little shop of hers and take her out to lunch and make things up with her."

  Quinn was completely at a loss over how to deal with his old teacher. He'd never been mothered before, and he could feel his impatience waiting to spring.

  He tried disarming her with humor. "What? And walk out in the middle of this fine repast?"

  "Oh, please. I'm sick of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches; you must be, too," she said, snatching away his plate and sliding the meal into the garbage can.

  "Mrs. D.—!"

  "Right now. You don't want to be going off to California for two weeks and leaving her so upset. Life is too short to waste time in anger. Quinn, believe me. No one ever listens to the old, but we know better than anyone: Life is short."

  "Don't you think I'm aware of that?" he said through gritted teeth.

  "Obviously you're not, or you wouldn't be doing this. Not only that, but you don't seem to understand how hard it will be to reconcile by telephone."

  "Oh, for chrissake! There's not going to be a reconciliation!" he said, standing up so abruptly that he knocked his chair over. "And I'm not going off for two weeks!"

  Right now, all he wanted was to get away from the widow's well-intentioned kindness. He'd made it just fine so far without a mother and without a wife. Obviously nothing was going to change.

  The old woman searched his face and must have found the answer she was looking for in the misery that was etched there. "Oh, no. Oh, Quinn, no. You're not going to run again?"